Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 4.djvu/16

2 acquired the name of the pretender was the real son of James and the queen. Had the right of succession been admitted, neither William nor Mary could have succeeded; but this right was now, in fact, denied. The right for the subjects to elect their own monarchs was proclaimed by the bill of rights; and by that right and no other William and Mary sate on the English throne.

But splendid as was the position which William had achieved—that of the monarch of one of the very first kingdoms of the world, his throne was no bed of roses. The catholics and the tories still retained their old leaning towards James. True, many of the tories had been greatly embittered against James by his later measures, but now that he was deposed, and a monarch sate on the throne who had been notoriously brought in by the whigs, a strong reaction took place in them. They professed suprise at William assuming the sceptre; they pretended that they had expected from his declaration that he intended only to assist them in bringing James to reason, and in putting him under proper constitutional restraints. Numbers of them were already in full correspondence with the banished prince. The clergy were equally disaffected. They had resisted the attempts of James to bring in popery, but they had now got a presbyterian king, and were not very sanguine of his support of the hierarchy. Moreover, they had been compelled to swallow their loud and long-continued vaunts of passive obedience, and now saw a monarch sitting on the throne who was placed there by the direct defeat of their grand principle, and who was therefore a standing monument of their humiliation.

The same feeling prevailed in the army. It had been powerful in numbers, but had done nothing to withstand a foreign prince at the head of foreign troops marching through the country, and placing himself on the throne. They had not been exactly defeated, because they had not come to a regular engagement; but they saw a foreign prince, supported by his foreign troops, presiding in the country; and, though not beaten, they felt humbled, and were now as near to mutiny as they had been ready to revolt under James. As for the whig party, which had invited and supported William, they were only eager for office and emolument. It was not patriotism in the bulk of them which animated them, but the triumph of their party; and they thought that nothing could ever pay them for the favour they had conferred on William. The accounts of those writers who were present and cognisant of their proceedings, represent them as clamorous for place, honour, and emolument, no one thinking that William could do enough for them, and every one ready to upbraid him for giving to others those posts which they thought they themselves were more entitled to.

Thus, though there was a great deal of outward rejoicing—the people shouting, the lord mayor and corporation, the speakers and maces of the two houses of parliament joining in the procession of the proclamation, followed by a long train of coaches containing noblemen and gentlemen of distinction, and crowds of whigs thronging the court at Whitehall—beneath the surface all was hollow, much was volcanic and dangerous, and nothing but the shrewd and cautious intellect of William could have enabled him to maintain his illustrious but most uneasy position.

His first public measure was to announce that all protestant subjects who were in office on the 1st of December last should retain their posts till further notice. On the 17th of February he published the list of his privy council, which contained men of almost all parties—Danby, Halifax, and even old Sancroft, the archbishop of Canterbury—in order to show the church that its interests would be protected. This and all other endeavours, however, failed to win over the high church prelate. The whole list was as follows:—The prince of Denmark, the princess Anne's husband, who had been one of the first to abandon James, and had thereby acquired the nickname of Est-il possible; the archbishop of Canterbury; the duke of Norfolk; the marquises of Halifax and Winchester; the earls of Danby, Lindsay, Devonshire, Dorset and Middlesex, Oxford, Shrewsbury, Bedford, Bath, Macclesfield, and Nottingham; the viscounts Falconberg, Mordaunt, Newport, and Lumley; the bishop of London; the lords Wharton, Montague, Delamere, and Churchill; Messrs. Bentinck, Sidney, Powle, Russell, Hampden, and Boscawen; Sir Robert Howard, and Sir Henry Capel.

If some of the members of the council gazed at each other in astonishment to find themselves included in one body, still more was that the case with the ministry. Danby, though a tory, was made president of the council; but whilst this offended others, who remembered that he had opposed the idea of the throne being vacant though he had resisted the appointment of a regency, he himself was wofullywoefully [sic] disappointed in not receiving the white staff. But William neither now nor till the end of his reign entrusted the office of lord high treasurer to a single person, but put it in commission. On the other hand Halifax, who had not joined William's party till the last moment, received again the privy seal, and was continued speaker of the house of lords, to the great disgust of the whigs, who remembered how long he had deserted them, and how successfully he had opposed them on the question of the exclusion bill. To add to their chagrin, the earl of Nottingham was made secretary of state. Nottingham had been foremost amongst those who had maintained the doctrine of passive obedience; who had denied that the throne could for an instant become vacant; had declined to give up James or to call in William, but had also led that party in submitting to the decision of the convention in favour of William and Mary, on the ground that we are enjoined by the New Testament to be subject to the powers that be. The other secretary, the earl of Shrewsbury, was indeed a whig, and in the highest favour with that party. He had been foremost in calling in William; but then he was a mere youth, only eight and-twenty years of age. Admiral Herbert expected to be appointed lord high admiral, and to have the entire control of the admiralty; but he had the mortification to see a number of others placed at the board of admiralty to share his authority, though he bore nominally the name of first lord of it. Churchill expected to be made master of the ordnance for his treason to James; but William had too certain evidence that he was at this very moment a traitor to himself; was in correspondence with the court of St. Germain's, and believed that he would be one of the first to run if any future success warranted a hope of James's restoration. He was therefore appointed only to a post in the household, along with Devonshire,